“Of course I said you needed me to run the house, Papa.”
“I didn’t bring you up to tell untruths,” he said. “You’ve learned, it seems; but this one won’t do you any good. You’re going, Elsie, and if you want some new dresses or hats or things you’d better be ordering ’em. You don’t seem to understand I really mean it.”
She dropped her book in her lap and sighed profoundly. “What for?” she asked. “Why do you make such a point of it?”
“Because I’ve been watching you and thinking about you, and I don’t believe I’m doing my duty by you. Not as”—his voice showed feeling—“not as your mother would have me do it. Sometimes you cheer up and joke with me, but I don’t believe you’re happy.”
“But I am.”
“You’re not,” he returned with conviction. “And the reason is, you lead too monotonous a life. A monotonous life suits elderliness, but it isn’t normal for youth. Really, you’re getting to lead the life of a recluse, and I won’t have it. If these provincial young people here bore you so that you won’t run about and play with them as the other girls do, why then you’ve got to try a different kind of young people.”
“But you said young people were all the same, Papa, the world over; and it’s true.”
“At least,” he insisted, “your cousin Cornelia’s will have different faces, and you’re going to go and look at ’em. Elsie, you’re not having a good time, and one way or another I’ve got to make you. You need a new view of some kind; you’ve got to be shaken out of this hermit habit you’ve fallen into.”
“Papa, please,” she said, appealingly. “I don’t want to go. Don’t make me. Please!”
At this he rose from his chair and came to her and took one of her hands in his. The room was warm, and she sat near the fire; but the slender hand he held was cold. “Elsie, I want you to,” he said. “I don’t want to think your mother might reproach me for not making you do what seems best for you. Let me wire your aunt to-morrow you’ll come next week.”